Review: Record Journey Volume 1
This month, all eyes are on Titan Comics' release of Aoashi. However, that’s not their only new title that is coming soon! The publisher is also bringing Ryoichiro Kezuka’s Record Journey into English, which promises to offer a must-read for music lovers. Does it deliver? Let’s take a closer look!
The Premise
The Record Journey series is set in a record shop in Tokyo. Still, it's actually a manga in which each chapter follows a different set of characters across multiple eras and countries. However, our first story is indeed in Tokyo, where a young lady called Miyama, working at a record store, has gone to visit a customer who is looking to sell off his grandfather's old vinyl collection. However, among the collection, they find a record that’s unfamiliar to Miyama and has the customer’s name Mayana, written on it.
Miyama is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery record and learn more about its history and where it originated from. Mayana can’t help but be curious, too. After all, his grandfather was a quiet person who didn’t talk a lot, and he feels learning more about the record is an important part of treasuring his memory. Together, the two take a journey through Tokyo that slowly unravels the secrets of what his grandfather left behind.
A Journey Through Music, Past and Present
There are five chapters in this first volume, which follow four different sets of characters (one of the stories is a two-parter). While our first tale following Mayana and Miyama is set in what appears to be modern-day Tokyo, our next is set somewhere in Europe, in a time when popular music was banned. There, we meet a 14-year-old girl, desperate to get her hands on the vinyl for a band’s new release. While working her part-time job, she overhears a conversation about a secret dealer who can acquire such things despite the government ban…
Afterwards, we move to a story that’s a little less tense as we follow a popular band that is stuck overseas when their flight is delayed. Luckily, they’re in a country that still speaks English and decide to go exploring, where they stumble across a bootleg record store and a girl who plays guitar and challenges them to a musical showdown.
Our final two-parter is about a pirate ship, pirates in the sense that they broadcast music that’s supposed to be banned to various countries from the middle of the ocean, where they’re avoiding facing the force of the law. While docked for supplies, they come across a woman looking for a ride to London and bring her aboard the ship, as that happens to be their next destination.
The thing all of these stories have in common is a rich love for music. No matter what time or country, all of these characters live their lives surrounded by and in love with music in its various forms. Not just records (which are the main focus here), but in the form of radio and playing music themselves. Even Mayana, who isn’t as enthusiastic about the medium as the other characters, deeply appreciates how that one record of his grandfather's has impacted his life.
It’s clear that mangaka Ryoichiro Kezuka also has a deep appreciation of music and vinyl collecting. Each of the record stores or central ‘base’ depicted in the work is lavishly detailed, and there’s even a proper floor plan for each between chapters. Record Journey was originally self-published, giving Kezuka plenty of time to work on the series at their own pace. And that certainly comes through in the finished product, with panels that are absolutely filled to the brim with detail. But they’re not messy or overwhelming; they’re simply a joy to look at.
Record Journey Release Details
As mentioned earlier, Record Journey comes to the West thanks to Titan Comics and has been released in a paperback edition as well as an eBook. The review material supplied to us by the publisher didn’t include any localisation credits, so I’m not sure whose responsible for translating etc., but the release reads well on the whole. The lettering is fairly uninspired, and the original sound effects have been left in place with a translation alongside them (similar to Yen Press releases), but that doesn’t take away from it too much. It would have been nice to have some translation notes exploring the musical references, too. The Japanese releases came with a colour page (simply a clean version of the cover), but I’m not sure if that is included based on the supplied material either.
The series is ongoing in Japan with 3 volumes currently released. Here in English, Titan Comics has Volume 2 in the schedule for early August. No sign of #3 yet, but that was a relatively new release on the Japanese side, so we’ll likely have a wait before we see that appear in English.
In Closing
Record Journey Volume 1, as promised, is a must-have for music fans. This is a love song to records and the music industry as a whole, which is sure to resonate with readers as they watch the variety of characters going about their everyday lives in time with the things and tunes that matter to them.
More details are available on the Titan Comics website. Our review copy was supplied by the publisher.
OMBANKIKO ©Ryoichiro Kezuka 2022 / KADOKAWA CORPORATION
